Biblion Bible Commentary
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My Soul Was Grieved for Israel
Judges 10:1-18
1 After Abimelech, Tola the son of Puah, the son of Dodo, a man of Issachar, arose to save Israel. He lived in Shamir in the hill country of Ephraim. · WEB
Israel's fullest confession in the book is met with a refusal to save — and then God is moved anyway by their misery.
After Abimelech, Tola the son of Puah... arose to save Israel Judges 10:1.
Two judges are recorded in five verses with no war attached. Tola judged twenty-three years, Jair twenty-two, and of Jair only his thirty sons on thirty donkeys and their thirty towns are noted Judges 10:3–4. These are the book's minor judges — nothing discreditable, nothing dramatic, and forty-five years of quiet between two disasters.
The children of Israel again did that which was evil in Yahweh's sight, and served the Baals, the Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines Judges 10:6.
The formula sounds for the sixth time, and the list has grown. Earlier cycles named the Baals and Asheroth Judges 2:11 Judges 3:7; here seven sources are catalogued — every neighbor's religion collected. They abandoned Yahweh, and didn't serve him is the summary, and the descent chapter two predicted is visible in the inventory itself Judges 2:19.
The children of Israel cried to Yahweh, saying, "We have sinned against you, even because we have forsaken our God, and have served the Baals" Judges 10:10.
This is the fullest confession in the book. Elsewhere Israel simply cries out under pressure Judges 3:9 Judges 6:6; here they name the sin and admit the cause.
"Didn't I save you from the Egyptians, and from the Amorites, from the children of Ammon, and from the Philistines?... Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods. Therefore I will save you no more" Judges 10:11–13.
God recites seven deliverances and then refuses. I will save you no more — the sentence the whole cycle had made to seem impossible. And the reason is that the crying out has become a technique: a people who return only when it hurts have not returned. Then the sharpest line God speaks in the book: go and cry to the gods which you have chosen. Let them save you in the time of your distress! Judges 10:14.
"We have sinned! Do to us whatever seems good to you; only deliver us, please, today." They put away the foreign gods from among them and served Yahweh Judges 10:15–16.
And the refusal produces what the rescues never did. They submit to whatever judgment God chooses, ask only for deliverance, and then put away the foreign gods — action, not words. This is the one place in the book where the confession is followed by removing the idols, and it came after God said no.
And his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel Judges 10:16.
The sentence that governs the book. Not therefore he relented because they had reformed — the reason is what it has been from the start, that their suffering moves him Judges 2:18 Exodus 3:7 Hosea 11:8. The refusal was real and the grief was stronger. Israel gathers at Mizpah , and the elders ask a question that reveals how little leadership is left: who is the man who will begin to fight? Judges 10:18 — with the office of head over Gilead offered as the inducement. God does not name a deliverer this time. The men of Gilead go looking for one, and the next chapter shows whom they find.
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